Shuffled Still Life

This poem was written by Katy Gero in a 12-Month Poetry Collection Generator taught by Angel Nafis

When I listen to the sound of glaciers calving,
I have fourteen nieces and nephews, plentiful and
stalking through the blades. The cat changed hands.
The dirt is here, on this glacier, pitstop to the stars.
Jason’s kids are. And Tani took hers, and if Brad—
I mean the rain that comes earlier and harder
so the story goes like this. Where I grew nothing died
for a year. I’ve never seen the cherry blossoms but
to fight against gravity. Not to the sun, up and up
into the sky with the rain and the stars
except by fire. And the grass always had a cat
and dandelions carrying wishes to the front lawns
and the changing of the seasons. Has snow fallen
to talk? Ask? Talk? There, the seeds pushing
Steven. No, here the seasons served like meals
and everyone ended with a girl. I mean they started
with strangers. Despite the storms. Despite my fears.
My people, though each day I grew by the beach,
then Kristin, then Lia. Did I mention Kristin? No,
one after another after another. Count them,
my nieces and nephews came quickly.
By instinct I think of whales. Of womb. My family, no,
I mean the snow that drifts in and then away. Away—

*

Katy Gero’s collection whalefall illuminates the multiple, uneasy relationships we have with nature. The speaker takes on the dual roles of poet and scientist, describing the retreat of glaciers in the same breath as the beauty of her nieces and nephews. An act of witness on the age of the Anthropocene, whalefall takes you down into the ocean, only to follow the ever-shifting light back to the surface of our world.